Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Warren McKinney, Hazen, Arkansas
Age: 85


I was born in Edgefield County, South Carolina. I am eighty-five years
old. I was born a slave of George Strauter. I remembers hearing them say
"Thank God Ize free as a jay bird." My ma was a slave in the field. I
was eleven years old when freedom was declared. When I was little, Mr.
Strauter whipped my ma. It hurt me bad as it did her. I hated him. She
was crying. I chunked him with rocks. He run after me, but he didn't
catch me. There was twenty-five or thirty hands that worked in the
field. They raised wheat, corn, oats, barley, and cotton. All the
children that couldn't work stayed at one house. Aunt Mat kept the
babies and small children that couldn't go to the field. He had a gin
and a shop. The shop was at the fork of the roads. When de war come on
my papa went to build forts. He quit ma and took another woman. When de
war closed ma took her four children, bundled em up and went to Augusta.
The government give out rations there. My ma washed and ironed. People
died in piles. I don't know till yet what was de matter. They said it
was the change of living. I seen five or six wooden, painted coffins
piled up on wagons pass by our house. Loads passed every day lack you
see cotton pass here. Some said it was cholorea and some took
consumption. Lots of de colored people nearly starved. Not much to get
to do and not much house room. Several families had to live in one
house. Lots of the colored folks went up north and froze to death. They
couldn't stand the cold. They wrote back about them dieing. No they
never sent them back. I heard some sent for money to come back. I heerd
plenty bout the Ku Klux. They scared the folks to death. People left